Hammarskjold Repeats Hope General Assembly Will ‘clarify’ Suez Issue

Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold reiterated today a belief he expressed in Brazil a week ago that he expected the Suez Canals issue to be “clarified” during the next session of the General Assembly “certainly by diplomatic means and perhaps publicly.”

Mr. Hammarskjold was somewhat more explicit today on the controversial issue as to whether Egypt’s anti-Israel blockade of the Suez Canal constituted a “conflict” with Israel or with the United Nations. Asked about his thinking with regard to that conflict, he said: “You may read the various United Nations resolutions and you may read the United Arab Republic’s statements–but they do not seem to speak exactly the same language.”

In listing the major issues on the Assembly agenda, Mr. Hammarskjold included the problem of the Arab refugees as one “question of significance.” The Arab refugee problem, he said, “leads on to other aspects of the Palestine problem but. I hope, this question will be discussed without reference to the past.”

Without naming specifically certain Arab leaders who oppose his refugee rehabilitation plan, Mr. Hammarskjold said that his proposal had been “read directly the opposite to its meaning. ” His plan, he declared, concerned “economic development as a means to an end.” He insisted: “I do not see the solution of the refugee problem short of economic development”